


no more dreaming of the dead as if death itself was undone

by goreds



Category: Frontier (TV 2016)
Genre: Dreamsharing, M/M, mention of another character's suicide, modern day AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:07:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21639328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goreds/pseuds/goreds
Summary: It's 2019, and Sam Grant has been having dreams about a 1700s businessman and his manservant.
Relationships: Samuel Grant/Cobbs Pond
Kudos: 6





	no more dreaming of the dead as if death itself was undone

Sometimes, Sam Grant, a wealthy New York start-up investor, has dreams about another life, in the 1700s, where someone who wears his face and has his name does terrible things in the name of his fur trading business. It’s an odd recurring dream. He doesn’t know much about anything in the 1700s, other than the historical trips he made to little log cabins and small forts when he grew up in Kentucky. The orphanage took him and the others to see pieces of their state history. He didn’t really care as a kid, and he doesn’t really care now.

But occasionally, he finds himself passing old churches, preserved by the New York Historical Society, and wondering about the Samuel Grant he sees in his dreams, with his loyal manservant, whose name he never quite catches. The manservant is very loyal to him indeed, dressing him...undressing him. Of course, Sam is gay, so maybe it’s just that part of him coming through in a dream. His sexuality doesn’t quite explain the brutal murders he and the manservant commit, however.

One time, he wakes up in a start, after ending a dream covered in a woman’s blood. The woman had been rude, but he isn’t quite sure why he...well, _Samuel_...snapped and bludgeoned the lady to death. Sam doesn’t think of himself as a cold-blooded killer; he’s been accused of having cold blood, but he’s an investor who lives in New York now, not the scared little boy from down South.

The next night, the dream ends with the manservant kissing him and leaving blood behind on his upper lip. That was...kinda hot. He finds himself thinking about the kiss while sitting at his desk the next morning, and he can almost taste the other man’s blood. It tasted...sweet? Blood doesn’t taste sweet, or at least that’s what he thinks is true. Dreams are odd, and he shakes it off.

But then something very strange happens, very strange indeed. The building his firm is located in gets a new doorman. A doorman with the face of the manservant. He tries to ignore it for a couple of days, but the dreams come back with a...passion. That’s the best word for it. And at some point, he... _Samuel_ , he reminds himself, moans out the manservant’s name. _Pond_. And then, the same night, in a different dream, he gets the first name, _Cobbs_. Cobbs Pond--what an unusual name. From the unsavory things this Pond and Samuel do, Sam can only assume it’s an alias.

But on a whim, he asks the doorman with the deep blue eyes and the ginger hair his name. The doorman smiles, and in a quiet, lilting tone, introduces himself as Cobbs Pond.

Yeah, that’s not a coincidence. And it’s all a little unnerving, but it also makes him extremely curious.

From that moment on, Sam finds himself deeper and deeper in his dreams. He wishes he was a lucid dreamer, so he could control them, and he could stop himself from murdering that woman...or sending Pond away after he goes mad because of the murder he committed. _No, Samuel committed._

Every day after the dreams, Sam wakes up, showers, shaves, gets dressed, gets on the subway, and heads from his historic, but roomy apartment on the Upper West Side to his office downtown. And every day, he sees Cobbs Pond, the doorman. They smile and exchange pleasantries. From what he can tell, he’s the only one in the building who even acknowledges the unassuming, soft-voiced doorman.

The dreams suddenly stop. The days pass, months pass, maybe even a year passes before he dreams of himself as Samuel Grant again. This time, the dream starts with his sending Cobbs away...and ends with his own murder, at the hand of the girl the two brought in for some purpose which he never quite gathered. He wakes up in a start when he himself gets bludgeoned in the dream, and he can’t quite get back to sleep. It’s early, about 4 AM, but he decides to get ready anyway and go in early. He’s the boss. He can do anything he wants--not that he has any employees to wonder about their early boss.

Sam starts to shave, when he knicks himself with the razor; he gasps in surprise, before applying pressure to the small wound. Out of curiosity, he sucks on his bloody finger once he’s applied a bandage.

It tastes like salt and iron. Not sweet at all.

Dreams, he decides, are extremely weird devices of an overheated mind. Maybe it’s because he hasn’t slept with anyone in a while. Maybe he’s just pent up. He had a boyfriend briefly, shortly after he moved to the city, while he was in grad school at NYU’s business school, but again, it was _brief_. And it wasn’t nearly as tender as Samuel and Cobbs’ relationship. He wonders if the doorman with the same face and name as Cobbs will be there already when he gets there.

He’s not. He’s actually not there the whole day, which Sam knows because he keeps going out to run errands, and Cobbs Pond just...isn’t there. There’s another doorman, who’s familiar, but not too familiar. Sam leaves the office late, to see if Cobbs is just on the night shift now. But there’s no sign of the man. So he asks the night doorman about it.

“Oh, Cobbs? That guy quit suddenly. No one’s really sure why.”

“That’s odd,” Sam says.

“Yeah, that’s a word for him.”

“What do you mean?”

“The guy was too...soft for this job, y’know? But he also seemed bored. I dunno, he was ex-Army. Maybe Special Forces. There’s not much action on this job--but I can’t see him killing anyone. The guy was too nice...to everyone. Got yelled at sometimes for being nice to the homeless who hang out outside at night.”

“Sometimes the nice ones are the most dangerous,” he finds himself muttering, thinking about how the Cobbs of his dreams and how... _brutal_ he could be.

“I guess, dude.”

Sam just nods and exits, messenger bag slung on his shoulder.

For some reason, he finds himself lost in his thoughts about the other man and misses his stop on the subway. He growls a little at himself inwardly, but he decides to just walk from the next stop up. It’s not a bad neighborhood, and it’s quiet tonight. He’s not any danger.

He thinks.

That night, for the first time in his life, he gets mugged. Some jackass just leaves him trembling on the ground, with nothing but his keys and his clothes and shoes--the jackass even demands his coat. It’s cold outside. Sam finds himself disoriented. _It’s just shock_ , he thinks to himself. _Breathe and you’ll figure it out._ He can’t even look at his watch to tell what time it is or call for help on his phone. A rat scurries past his feet in the alley the mugger forced him into, and for the first time since that boyfriend from grad school dumped him, he wonders why he ever left Kentucky.

He hears footsteps coming up behind him. He tenses up, fearing another mugger. He clenches his fists, determined not to get the upper hand. Whoever it is places a hand softly on his shoulder, and Sam quickly jumps to his feet and swings blindly. He was never good in a fight. Maybe whoever it is can sense that, because he immediately catches Sam’s fist. But he doesn’t go any further than that--no twisting of the wrist, no gut punch, just a catch of his fist. He looks up to see who “whoever” is.

It’s Cobbs, the too-friendly doorman. Sam gasps in surprise. “Cobbs?”

Cobbs just nods. “At your service. What are you doing out here all alone, and without a coat? It’s cold out.”

“I got mugged.”

“I see,” the doorman places a hand on Sam’s shoulder, gently. “He didn’t hurt you?”

Sam gasps out, “Just my pride.”

“You’re not good in a fight...you got lucky.”

“Yeah, no shit.”

Cobbs seems to smile at Sam’s candor. Those blue eyes just look at him kindly. “Do you still have your keys?”

“It’s all he left with me. Guess he wasn’t _too_ much of a jackass.”

“Let’s get you back to your place. How far is it?”

“I’m...I’m not sure. Where are we?”

“What’s the address?”

Sam hesitates, before giving it to him.

“We’re only two blocks away.” Cobbs shrugs off his coat, brown, with a fur collar, and offers it to Sam.

“What about you?”

“I’ve seen colder.”

Sam decides to take him up on the offer and puts on the coat. It smells of some strange cologne. It’s not a bad scent, just strange.

They begin to walk down the alley.

“I can’t believe I got mugged two blocks from home. Just my luck, I guess.”

“And in this neighborhood,” Cobbs says, characteristically quietly.

“Yeah, weird. What were you doing here?”

“Just wandering.”

“Wandering? This late? What, you got a death wish?”

Cobbs does not reply.

The two men walk in silence until they make it to Sam’s building. Cobbs looks up at the carvings over the entryway. “Nice place.”

“Yeah, it’s not bad. You want to come up? I could fix you a drink.”

“No, that’s not needed.”

“Well, I feel like it is. You kinda saved me out there.”

Cobbs nods, with a blank expression. “Lead the way.”

They take the elevator up to the fourth floor, Sam ahead, Cobbs following. Sam gets out his keys, and he goes to unlock the door, but realizes his hands are shaking. “Here,” he thrusts the keys towards Cobbs, “You do the honors.”

Cobbs just takes the keys and opens the door. Sam enters first and finds himself collapsing on his couch. His legs ache. His whole body aches. “Jesus Christ,” he mutters.

Cobbs places the keys in the bowl by the door and heads over to him. He kneels next to Sam, who finds himself curling up in on himself. “It’s the shock and adrenaline; when the chemicals in your body get released they make things hurt after a while. Especially if you’ve tensed up the entire time. Relax.”

Sam realizes Cobbs has started rubbing small circles on the back of his right shoulder. Sam flashes to Samuel’s Cobbs doing the same thing in one of his dreams. Samuel had been furious about some setback to his fur business.

“Is everything okay? You seem...somewhere else.” Cobbs’ eyes are caring but have gone flinty.

“Sorry, this all just feels...familiar somehow.” Sam finds himself saying. He wishes he hadn’t said that. That just opens up another series of questions.

But Cobbs doesn’t say anything in return to that. Just nods, as if he knows exactly what Sam’s talking about. The two men sit there in silence, Cobbs kneeling on the ground, Sam shivering on the couch, staring off into the distance. _I got mugged tonight. Fuck. And now all my dreams seem to be coming true._

Eventually, Cobbs stops kneeling and rises. “We both need a drink.”

“Right...alcohol’s in the cabinet over...there.” Sam indicates a cabinet on the edge of the kitchen. Cobbs just nods, again ( _he does that a lot_ ) and comes back with a bottle of whiskey and two tumblers. He pours the whiskey into the two glasses. Sam wills one of his hands to stop shaking and grabs his tumbler and downs it quickly. Cobbs seems surprised.

“Wow.”

“What? I’m stressed out. That’s what I do when I’m stressed out.”

Cobbs smiles and downs his own glass just as quickly as Sam had. “I know the feeling.”

Sam finds himself asking Cobbs questions as they continue to drink...Sam’s starting to feel warm again, and the pain seems to be receding, although he knows he’ll have one hell of headache in the morning.

“So, where’d you go? One of the other doormen said you’d quit.”

“It wasn’t my speed. I’m working another security job now. Much more...challenging.”

Sam doesn’t push that, because it sounds dangerous, and Sam’s had enough danger for one night. “Where do you live? Nearby?”

“Ah, no. Lower East Side.”

Sam’s taken aback. “That’s quite a hike.”

Cobbs shrugs. “I like walking around this neighborhood. Lots of history. And I like walking in general.”

“The doorman said you’d served?”

If Cobbs is annoyed by this line of questioning, he doesn’t indicate it. “Yes. Army. For ten years, in the Middle East.”

“Wow, so you’ve seen some shit.”

All Cobbs says is this: “Yes.”

“Well, I’m all out of questions. Anything you want to ask me?”

Cobbs cocks his head to his side, looking a tad like a puppy. He ponders Sam’s final question. But he doesn’t ask a question. Because, seemingly, he has all the answers about Sam’s life. “You’re an investor in start-ups. You work all alone on the 11th floor of the building, corner office. You’re from Kentucky. You grew up in an orphanage, because your parents and your baby brother died in a murder-suicide while you were at school. It was your mother who committed the murders of your father and your baby brother, very unusual case. You usually take the subway fairly efficiently, but tonight you missed your stop, for a reason I haven’t determined. You went to NYU’s business school and had a brief relationship with a guy who...well, let’s just say _he_ wasn’t worth it.”

Sam’s a little shocked. Okay, a lot shocked. This suddenly all feels much more dangerous than getting mugged.

“How...how do you know all that about me?”

“I do my homework.”

“Why on me?”

“Because ever since I came back from the Middle East, I’ve been having these strange dreams--and you’re in them.”

“What?” Sam is shocked. They’re having similar dreams.

“When I met you for the first time, I realized you were the man in my dreams. The man my counterpart...loved.” He chose that final word carefully, Sam notices.

Sam takes a chance. “I’ve been having similar dreams. Very odd. I thought. I don’t even really care about furs or the 1700s or...fencing?” It’s a small enough detail that if Cobbs has really been having similar dreams he would recognize it.

Cobbs nods. “Yes, your counterpart and my counterpart fence regularly. Not just with foils, either.” He looks almost mischievous at that last point.

Sam finds anything he wants to say in response to that caught in his throat.

“How are you feeling now?”

“Okay...the alcohol’s helping.”

Cobbs smiles.

Suddenly, Sam finds himself being kissed, tasting the liquor on Cobbs’ stubbled lips. And he finds himself kissing back. It doesn’t feel like the kisses in his dreams, where the two seemed to be fighting as much as they were fucking each other. It feels surprisingly tender but still familiar, somehow. Like they’ve been doing this for a while.

Cobbs breaks the kiss off. “That was nice,” is all he says.

“Ye...yeah.” Sam finds himself stammering out. He’s usually much more eloquent when seducing, he notes. Of course, he’s not really seducing, is he? He’s being seduced.

That happened to Samuel a lot, too.

“I should go,” Cobbs says, rising.

Sam catches the other man’s hand. “Please don’t go,” he says. He doesn’t want to lose him like Samuel lost his Cobbs.

“If you wish.” Cobbs sits back down next to him.

“In...doing all your homework, did you find out if the other Samuel Grant and Cobbs Pond existed?”

“I can’t find a record of either man.”

“So this isn’t...reincarnation.”

“Maybe it’s just an odd connection.”

“Did I...did Samuel murder a woman in your dreams?”

“Cobbs found Samuel after the murder, but he didn’t witness it, no.” Cobbs seems totally divorced from his dream counterpart, unlike Sam.

“And then Samuel went crazy and drove his Cobbs away. And then Samuel died.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Huh?”

“Well, Cobbs was gone by then. If no one knew, and no one told him, he wouldn’t have known.”

Sam feels very sad suddenly. “I’m sorry.”

“Why? You’re not Samuel.”

“But I feel like I am. I’ve been stuck dreaming about him so long now...I feel like somehow we’re combining, y’know?”

“No, I don’t. Dream Cobbs seems different.”

This time, Sam kisses Cobbs, and Cobbs answers the kiss by starting to unbutton Sam’s shirt. Sam shrugs off Cobbs’ coat, which he realizes he’s still wearing. Cobbs resumes unbuttoning Sam’s shirt and kisses his collarbone. Sam goes to pull off Cobbs’ sweater and the shirt underneath; Cobbs lets him, just watching him. Sam wonders why. When he sees the scars all over Cobbs’ chest, he realizes Cobbs is seeing if Sam’ll still sleep with him.

Sam really does not care. He hisses, and then: “Guess you really did see some shit,” as he traces the trajectory of one of the scars all the way down to Cobbs’ hip. He wonders if the scar goes past, down Cobbs’ leg. “Who did this to you?”

“IED went off. I was one of the lucky ones.”

“Still looks like they had to put you back together again.”

“It wasn’t too bad.”

Sam kisses a burn scar over Cobbs’ heart, and Cobbs shifts in his seat.

“This is...much more tender than I anticipated,” Cobbs says quietly. “Samuel wasn’t usually the tender one.”

“I guess I’m not all Samuel then.”

“We should really stop talking. Get to it.”

Sam can feel his eyes twinkling, and they do indeed get to it.

The next morning, which is really only a few hours later, the sun starts to beam through Sam’s windows. The two are still on the couch, but naked now, limbs entangled. Cobbs has a hand in Sam’s hair, and Sam is curled up, pressing his forehead into Cobbs’ chest. Sam can feel the sun hitting his back, and he groans a little. The room is getting brighter, even though his eyes are closed.

He both doesn’t want this to end, and he doesn’t want the sunlight to trigger a helluva of a hangover headache. Cobbs starts rustling Sam’s hair, which Sam is very aware is a mess.

“Good morning,” Cobbs says quietly. The taller man starts to disentangle himself from Sam.

Sam just groans a little more, opening his eyes, and looks up at Cobbs, who is starting to get dressed. “Was this a one-time deal?”

Cobbs smiles at Sam, a wider grin than the shy smiles they exchanged the previous night. “Not if you don’t want it to be.”

Sam considers this, as the sun hits Cobbs’ hair, giving him the appearance of a pale, glowing flame and making those blue eyes gleam.

“Teach me how to fight back?” is all he says. Cobbs just gently laughs.

And the dreams stop for good.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to @MasterOfAllImagination for telling me how to properly watch Frontier for all the Sobbs goodness. No thanks to the creators for screwing them over. All thanks also to the actors for throwing themselves into the characters and their relationship.


End file.
